User blog:Jonna Friesian/Update, I Suppose
Greetings again Knights. I feel like I need to update you all and a blog post seems the most effective way of reaching everyone at once. Since going mostly inactive last year, I have had quite a lot of struggle with what I was supposed to do. I was convicted that I needed to give less of my time to KOTOS stuff, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do instead. That was my main frustration. I spent over a year waiting and seeking the alternative, asking God what task He was now going to give me, with no response. That's a really long time to be out of sorts and feeling distant from God, but that's exactly what happened. So I kind of pushed my discontent to the back corner and forced myself to wait for some opportunity to be led to. Until a few weeks ago, there was no change. Finally Jesus got it through my thick skull- I'm not supposed to wait around for a to-do list of Christian things to accomplish. He is not a God of "things you get to do for Me", but a God of a personal relationship. I needed to turn my attention away from "doing stuff for God" and towards being closer to Him. He was and has always just been after my heart. That has, apparently, been an extremely difficult lesson for me, seeing as over a year since this started I am only now understanding. He cares about saving people, not what the people can do for him. Do I still hope I get to accomplish things in His name? Yes, and I'll still be seeking opportunities. But now I realize that was not the point. I need to be content in Him, instead of waiting for fullfilment in tasks given to me. The joy in following these opportunities comes from knowing I belong to Him, not the other way around. Since realizing this, I have felt a lot more at peace, especially concerning creative endeavors. Perhaps the greater portion of all my writing has been in LMB/KOTOS, and suddenly departing from that entire world made it very hard to write. I have hardly written since the end of 2017; every time I tried I would just run out of will or excitement a few sentences in, and I'd end up just closing out the whole document feeling worse than when I'd started. Now that I am feeling so much more at peace, I've been finding writing easier again, and it makes me happy to return to that, albeit not at the same level of activity yet. Which leads me to the more update-like part of this update. I will be participating a little more in KOTOS again, although as I said before, not at the same level of activity. This is primarily due to two reasons: One, I don't want to put my involvement in KOTOS in a position where I would be tempted to make it more important than God in my heart. With God's guidance however, I see that KOTOS was never really the problem- it was me with my skewed priorities of course. Reason number two: I have another test I am studying for, and it is indeed an important test. So I need to be spending plenty of time to focus and study for that. Because of these reasons, a lot of my "increased activity" is not going to be apparent at first because I'll be reading mostly. Gotta catch up on a lot of stuff it would seem. :P I know we don't all have the same views on God and Jesus. I'm grateful that I have the freedom to talk to you guys about my beliefs and what has been happening with me, and not feel like I have to walk on eggshells to explain. I don't want this to sound preachy, only honest. I appreciate you guys reading it through. Category:Blog posts